


Where There Is Need

by Jenzia



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Gen, Multi, Yugoda/Kanna/Pakku (Avatar) - Freeform, can be read as any combination of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-27 00:05:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18187256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenzia/pseuds/Jenzia
Summary: There is a world beyond the North Pole.





	Where There Is Need

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/gifts).



> Happy Purim, ambyr! 
> 
> I'm not overly familiar with the comics, so this may not be comic compliant. 
> 
> Comments and constructive critism welcome.

It was only this past winter that the Moon was murdered and reborn, her own midwife.

  
Yugoda had lived her eighty years almost entirely within the confines of the capital’s great walls. Yes, there’d been short trips to some of the nearby villages in need of a healer, but she’d been born there and had expected to one day die there, surrounded by her grandchildren and students. She knew there was a world beyond the North Pole, but like the Spirt World, it seemed a place removed from reality. It was shrouded in stories, horrific and strange, a place that happened to other people. After all, Kanna had sailed into the horizon and never returned.

  
But her granddaughter had.

  
The Tribe fumbled catching that long-delayed boomerang and were collectively thwacked on the head. (And, if years later Yugoda lay awake in the dead of night wondering at the long-term effects from that blow, that was her business.)

  
But before they could check for a concussion, that hurt was overshadowed by the Fire Nation’s attack leaving them crying over broken bones and a broken heart. They looked to the waning moon and saw that the fractured wall needed resetting - North and South needed to be aligned if the Water Tribe was to heal.

  
Pakku proclaimed he was heading south to their Sister Tribe - he and his waterbenders would revitalize and rebuild. Yugoda joined him - the North had suffered an acute attack, but the South had been battling a chronic illness and she would go where there was need of a healer. After all, Kanna had run there – so they followed, albeit sixty years later, drawn as inevitably as the waves to the full moon.

  
The long journey was made longer by being in such close quarters with each other.

 

...

 

Kanna is not suitably impressed that they’ve both survived it without her.

  
It is spring when they arrive in what was left of Kanna’s home, barely more than a hunting camp. The Northerners easily double the population. They spend the rest of the season reuniting and rebuilding, reconnecting with the other scattered villages.

  
A world beyond the poles and the water connecting them still doesn’t seem quite real.

  
It’s the end of summer when Pakku stands before the growing village and announces that he is leaving – destiny is afoot, and his mastery is needed to liberate Ba Sing Se.

Perhaps he’ll drown the enemy with his ego.

Kanna waits for him to finish and waits for him to come to her. Yugoda wonders to what extent Kanna’s been waiting and for how long. He comes.

  
“You didn’t think this was worth mentioning before now?”

  
His self-satisfaction falters. The few lingering people suddenly find the need to be elsewhere. Yugoda stays where she is at Kanna’s side.

  
“This is our chance to finally end this war that’s ravaged the world for a century!”

  
“Good to know that the North recognizes that it is part of the world.  Yes, you will do what is necessary, and do it bravely. But if you think anything is going to come of your necklace, I expect you to tell me about world-changing plans _before_ they’re declared to the entire Tribe.”

Turning to Yugoda, she continues, “I imagine even those fighting a destined battle need a healer after the fighting is over. This is my home, and it will be here when my family is ready to return.”

  
She smiles and walks away.

  
“You know, I’m sick of her doing that.”

  
As it turns out, there really is a world outside the Water Tribe and it is just as strange as the old stories suggested. But it suffers from the same chronic illness as the Southern Water Tribe. Its fever simmers through the rest of summer before following in the Moon’s wake under a blazing sky.

  
The world that emerges on the other side of the comet is an even larger, more improbable place than she ever imagined.  Promises of peace whisper in the wind as she heals men of three nations who had fought together under a single banner. She heals men and woman they’d fought against.

  
Kanna’s granddaughter asks for help healing the new Fire Lord.

  
Somehow it looks like the world happened to her.

She goes where there is need of a healer.

 

 


End file.
